Millions of consumers mail letters, packages, and other mailpieces worldwide daily. An international mailpiece generally may not leave the sending country until the appropriate customs service reviews the customs declaration form itemizing the mailpiece's contents and its declared value. Similarly, an international mailpiece may not enter the destination country until the customs declaration form is reviewed by the customs service in that country. Today, to send a mailpiece internationally, depending on the type of international mailpiece and the declared value of its contents, the sender must fill out one of the available paper customs declaration forms. That paper form, affixed to the mailpiece, must then be reviewed by the customs services of the sending and destination countries.
Each time a mailpiece crosses a country's border, the customs service of that country may screen its contents. The customs service may perform that screening by opening and visually inspecting the contents of the mailpiece. More often, however, the customs service simply reviews the disclosure form, such as the customs declaration form, prepared by the sender of the international mailpiece. Typically, the customs declaration form lists all the items enclosed in the mailpiece and their declared value.
Currently, most customs declaration forms designed for consumer use are in paper form. Once a consumer fills out a customs declaration form, one copy may be stored by the service provider in archives and another copy may be stored by the customs service of the country from which the mailpiece is sent. A third copy, typically attached to the international mailpiece itself, may need to be examined twice. The first time, the customs declaration form may be examined prior to the international mailpiece leaving the sending country by its customs service. The customs declaration form may also be examined a second time prior to delivery of the international mailpiece by the customs service of the destination country.
The review of a paper-based customs declaration form by two customs services significantly increases the delivery time of international mailpieces. As is well known in the art, delivery of an international mailpiece may take up to six weeks. For example, an international mailpiece mailed via airmail service or economy mail service offered by a service provider, such as the United States Postal Service (USPS), may be in transit for four to six weeks.
In addition, because of the significant volume of international mail, customs services may need to review millions of customs declaration forms on a daily basis. And, to review customs declaration forms, customs service personnel may need to travel to the shipping and receiving sites of service providers where international mailpieces arrive for further routing. The review process may be further slowed due to the need for customs service personnel to handle each international mailpiece individually.
It is therefore desirable to provide methods and systems for creating and maintaining customs declaration forms in an electronic format enabling paperless and expedient forwarding, review, search, and storage via digital means, such as with a computer-based network.